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Bread

Brown Steamed Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, graham flour, white flour, molasses, sour milk, sweet milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Brown Steamed Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine corn meal, Graham flour, white flour, molasses, sour milk, and sweet milk, mixing well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Add baking soda and stir until fully incorporated.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming mold.

  2. Steam for 4 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the bread.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and tenderness to the crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the batter.
Corn meal
Provides the coarse, hearty body that gives the bread its structure.
Graham flour
Adds a nutty, wholesome flavour and a coarser texture than white flour.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid, such as the sour milk and molasses here, to release carbon dioxide. Stirring it in only until combined keeps the gas bubbles from escaping before the mold is steamed.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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